


Together Sounds Nice When You're Alone

by ellydash



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-17
Updated: 2011-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:43:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellydash/pseuds/ellydash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They deserve to feel good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together Sounds Nice When You're Alone

Rachel walks down the hallways of McKinley like she’s wearing horse blinders. Head high, chin pointed, she only sees what’s directly in front of her. Her peripheral vision is non-existent, a loss of sight born out of self-preservation and self-direction.

  
When she’s rounding the corner on her way to algebra, a bounce in her step and a song sparking just behind her lips, she finds the new horizon at the end of the corridor and trains her eyes straight ahead. The jutting foot doesn’t catch her attention until she’s stumbling over it, her limbs flailing in a laughable attempt at defense, books flying. She hits the floor hard, face down, her head smacking against the linoleum, and the pain of it shudders through her jaw and neck and shoulders.

  
The snickering laughter above her – a boy’s voice; she doesn’t know the author, and she doesn’t need to – cuts off abruptly. “Oh, shit,” she hears him say, followed by the rapid slap of his footsteps, fading quickly. 

  
“Rachel,” Mr. Schue exclaims, just north of her head, and then, in a shout directed away from her, “I saw you, Seth. Don’t think you’re going to get away with that.”

  
 _Why not?_  she thinks, feeling horribly sorry for herself.  _They always do_.

  
There’s the press of his hand on her arm and his voice, again, gentle with concern. “Can you stand up? Are you okay?”

  
“Yes,” she manages, and slowly pulls her head up, moves her protesting body off the floor, standing with shaky legs. Mr. Schue bends down to collect her spilled textbooks. 

  
“Are you sure you’re all right, Rachel?” he asks her, straightening up.

  
She’s swamped with shame so strong it makes her chest ache.

  
“Yes,” she repeats, carefully. “Thank you, Mr. Schue.”

  
“Do you want to go talk to Principal Figgins? Or visit the nurse? That’s going to be a nasty bruise.” He reaches out to touch her jaw, then pulls back his hand, clearly thinking better of it. 

  
Rachel shakes her head, not trusting the steadiness of her voice. “Would you,” she tries, after a moment, “would you just sit with me somewhere, for a few minutes? I need to collect myself.” It’s the only thing she can imagine that’s worse than letting Mr. Schue see her shaken like this: retreating alone to a quiet classroom corner, listening to the muffled giggles and shouts of her peers in the hallway, and knowing it’s a language she can't translate.

  
“Of course,” Mr. Schuester says, sounding relieved that she’s letting him help. “The choir room’s empty until next period. We can go in there.”

  
She’s able to get out of the hallway and through the door before she starts to cry, ugly, wracking sobs that flood her throat and clog her nose. It’s not just the humiliation of being tripped, and it’s not even that it happened in front of Mr. Schue, although Rachel wants more than anything for him to think of her as always deliberate, never deviating from her intended paths. It’s how  _nice_  he’s being, after weeks and months of little better than tolerance. 

  
“I should find a mirror,” she manages, wiping her cheeks with her hands, attempting to focus. Mr. Schue places a concerned hand on her back. “I need to see my face.”

  
“Why?” he asks her, shutting the door behind them. 

  
“It’s an excellent opportunity to practice my tragic facial expressions. I might as well make the most of it.” And, she doesn’t say, because seeing her own reflection is the only thing that calms her down quickly (if Rachel were more honest with herself, she’d admit that the image tricks her, just a little, into feeling less alone). 

  
Mr. Schue shakes his head no, directing her to a chair. Reluctantly, she takes it, carefully smoothing her skirt over the tops of her exposed thighs. “Let the opportunity slide, just this once, okay?”

  
Rachel nods, sniffling a little, and stares down at her lap. It’s too bad. She knows her lip trembling still needs work: a little more control, a little less vibration.

  
He pulls another chair next to hers.

  
“I know,” he says, placing the textbooks on the floor and sitting down, “that I’m your teacher, and this sort of thing is generally pretty frowned upon, but if you’d like a hug, I’d be glad to give you one.”

  
She looks up at him, startled.

  
“If it makes you uncomfortable – ” he adds, quickly. 

  
“No,” she bursts out, too loudly, and then covers her mouth with her hand. “I mean, it doesn’t, Mr. Schue. That would be nice.”

  
His arms open slightly, awkwardly inviting her in, and Rachel leans against him, her hands curling around his back. She presses her face against the cradle between Mr. Schue’s shoulder and neck, gingerly at first, and then, once he doesn’t shift away, more firmly. It’s smoother than she’d imagined, back when he’d been the object of her tentative fantasies, when she’d been foolish and fifteen and known so much less about the world. (Her infatuation, still lightly persistent even after she’d realized its futility, had cracked a little with each new piece of evidence that Mr. Schue was the kind of person who didn’t know how to get what he needed.)

  
Rachel’s older now. She’s sixteen and she’s learned the wordless conversation that knowing fingers can extract from sympathetic flesh. She’s learned that the swells and valleys of her body are tempting geographies. She’s learned that what she misses most about Finn is the reassuring constancy of touch: to be held like she’s essential.

  
He’s not pulling away. It occurs to her, suddenly, that she might be the first person Mr. Schue’s held like this in a very long time. Maybe since his divorce. 

  
She wonders which of them needs comforting more.

  
“I’m getting your shirt soaked,” she whispers, into the hollow of his skin. At the move of her mouth Mr. Schue shifts in his chair. She can hear his quick exhale through his nostrils. 

  
“It needs cleaning anyway,” he says, but the note of self-deprecation she’s come to expect from him isn’t there. “Better?”

  
When she lifts her head, she sees the faint print of her nose and mouth on him, the red press of it annotating the curve of his shoulder. “Yes.”

  
“Good.” 

  
They’re trading in empty currency now, words that don’t acknowledge the thrill that shakes through Rachel when she realizes Mr. Schue’s left arm is still around her shoulders. He’s pulling her to his side, like he’s afraid of what could happen if he let her go. Her right arm presses against his body, testing: he might fracture if she gives him her full weight. 

  
“This too shall pass.” Mr. Schue pronounces the phrase in an awkward, stilted voice, as if he’s quoting someone with authority. “It’ll get better for you, Rachel. I promise.”

  
Rachel sniffs, and wishes she had a tissue. It’s incredible, she thinks, how adults are so sure they can minimize your pain by telling you there’s an end to it. “Did it get better for you?” she asks, unable to keep the sharp note out of her voice. 

  
He tenses against her. “I’m not you. I was never as good at performing as you are.”

  
 _You’re right_ , she wants to say, but manages to restrain herself, another sign, Rachel knows, that she’s growing up. “That’s not what I meant. I wasn’t talking about performing.”

  
“You don’t have perspective yet,” he tells her, not answering her question, “because you’re still young. You don’t understand how much you have to offer.”

  
“I know I’m extremely talented,” she says, stung. “I think I’ve made that very clear.”

  
He waves a dismissive hand. “No, not that. Of course you’re talented, Rachel. There’s more to you than just your voice, you know.”

  
Rachel’s quiet, holding her breath, hoping he’ll tell her. She nestles into the crook of his arm, trying to get comfortable. There’s the scent of his cologne, idling around the two of them. It doesn’t resemble Finn’s slightly salty odor. It’s fuller, dissonant, like melon and the sharp sting of copper.

  
“You’re intelligent.” Mr. Schue’s speaking slowly, as if he’s really trying to come up with her best points, not just reciting what he thinks she wants to hear. “You’re optimistic. You’re incredibly tenacious.”

  
“I thought you told me I had a terrible attitude and was a lousy sport. Remember?” Reflexively, she looks over at the chair she’d been sitting in that day, the day of the duct tape. He’d yelled at her in front of everyone. The embarrassment she’d felt sinks back into her skin, stinging.

  
“I was upset.” Mr. Schue has the decency to look uncomfortable. “For other reasons that didn’t have to do with you. It was inappropriate, and I apologize.”

  
“Tell me something else you like about me,” Rachel says, abruptly, so that she doesn’t have to think about how horrible he’d made her feel. Later, she’ll write down these comments, maybe, in a notebook, and re-read them when she’s feeling bad. They’ll be like salve for a wound, gifts for the impoverished. 

  
Mr. Schue smiles, a little ruefully. “You’re great at showing your feelings,” he tells her, after a short pause. 

  
“Oh.” It’s not what she was hoping for. (She’s not sure what she was hoping for.)

  
“No, really,” he insists. “When you get to be my age, you realize what a gift that is. To be able to wear your heart on your sleeve, even when it gets bruised by careless and cruel people.”

  
“Your age,” she says, lightly. “You make it sound like you’re an old man, Mr. Schuester.”

  
He turns his head to look at her then, and there’s something in his face that makes her stomach knot. “Old enough.”

  
“You’re what, in your early thirties?” She’s not sure why she’s pursuing this, but it seems important to clarify her untidy thoughts. To seem less young, herself, by showing that she understands, has the perspective that comes with growing older. “Nowadays, that’s quite young. A lot of people aren’t even getting married until their thirties.” She doesn’t tell him that she, herself, plans on being married at twenty-seven. 

  
Mr. Schue flinches, slightly, and Rachel realizes, with an accompanying kick of discomfort, that she’s reminded him about his divorce. “Or remarried,” she interjects, hastily. “I understand remarriage statistics are excellent for people in their thirties.”

  
“Rachel,” he says, his voice slightly hoarse. He clears his throat. “Don’t, okay?”

  
Her face is burning. “I’m sorry.”

  
“It’s fine.” 

  
They sit in silence for a moment. She can feel his hand on her arm, pressing lightly just above her elbow, and the rest of her body stings with absence.

  
 _We are very lonely_ , Rachel thinks,  _the two of us_.

  
“When I was a little girl,” she says softly, not looking at him, “my dads had a trick for making me feel better when I fell down, when I scraped my knee or my finger.”

  
She can almost feel the balm of his smile. “Did they sing to you?”

  
“No. Well, yes, they did. Usually Irving Berlin for the worst injuries, although occasionally I  _would_  request Gershwin.” Rachel’s lips are dry, and she licks them, automatically, feeling the abrasion on her jaw twinge in response. “But that’s not what I was referring to. They’d kiss it better.”

  
If he pulls away now, she’ll die. She’ll crawl under the piano and curl into a ball and close her eyes and just wish herself dead. Rachel knows she has the resolve to make it happen, if necessary.

  
He doesn’t pull away.

  
“I’m not your father,” he says, quietly. “Either of them.”

  
“And I’m not an idiot,” she returns, voice shaking, and closes her eyes. “So we know where we stand.”

  
There’s a pause, longer than any dramatic hesitation she’s ever indulged in, and then, and then, and then: she feels the faint push of his mouth against her jaw, and his breath, hot and light over the bruise. Rachel doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. She’s learning that staying still is the cardinal secret to making him unfold.

  
When the tip of his tongue touches her damaged skin, she can’t control her gasp. 

  
“Like that?” Mr. Schue asks her, hoarsely, pulling back. It’s not how Rachel had imagined she could make him sound: this anxious question like the prelude to a long, rapid drop. She looks at him mutely, and nods. The beating ache between her legs is a terrible metronome.

  
His hand rests on her thigh, where the hem of Rachel’s skirt meets her skin. 

  
“You deserve to feel good,” he says, his hand on her trembling, mouth close enough that his breath stirs her hair. The quaver tells her what his words don’t: that he’s terrified by what they’re falling into. Will Schuester, she knows, is a good person, and Rachel is sure he’s never, ever before touched a student like this. 

  
Hot pride sparks inside her: she’s special. This is further conformation. 

  
“I deserve to feel good,” she repeats, almost completely convinced, and she draws her knees apart, just a few inches: a summons. 

  
When his hand slips up her thigh, beneath her skirt, to cup carefully between her legs, Mr. Schue breathes  _oh Christ_ against her cheek like a prayer of the damned and Rachel cries out, a choked feeble sound she doesn’t recognize from her own vocal chords.

  
“You have to be quiet,” he whispers, the drone of it humming through her. “Someone might hear us. Someone might come in and see you –” His voice is thick, shaking with the fever of possibility. “See you sitting there. Spreading your legs for your teacher.”

  
At this, she groans, the suggestion he’s given her triggering a small, embarrassing rush of liquid against his hand. His fingers browse the crotch of her panties, testing, and the tease of it is excruciating. 

  
“Mr. Schue,” she gasps, hoping he’ll tell her to call him Will. He doesn’t.

  
“You're so wet.” His mouth is damp on her neck, her ear; his voice fractured. “God, I’ve barely touched you and you’re  _ready_  for me.”

  
Rachel whimpers, sliding forward in the chair to push against his hand. “Please,” she manages, needing pressure and not knowing how to ask for it. This is absolutely the most intensely erotic moment of her life, even surpassing the time last year when she and Jesse had staged, privately, a performance of “Dangerous Game” from  _Jekyll and Hyde_. She’d wanted to wear a faux-fur cape; he’d insisted that only one of them should wear a cape, and it was his turn. 

  
Mr. Schue slips a finger underneath the fabric, tracing the slick vertical slit of the skin underneath. She can’t help it: she thrusts up, hips rising, a better plea than any in her vocabulary.

  
“You deserve to feel good,” he murmurs, again. 

  
Somehow, even through the haze of lust that’s distorting her perception, Rachel realizes that he’s talking to himself. 

  
“Yes,” she pants, and again, “yes,” because she wants to do this for him as much as she wants it for herself. She’s swollen with the knowledge that he needs something from her, even if she doesn’t fully understand what that something might be. 

  
His finger glides between her folds, without resistance, and he finds the keening nub of her clitoris; rubs gently. Rachel bites down on her fist to keep from making too much noise,  _someone might hear us, someone might come in and see you_ , sharp huffing breaths escaping around her teeth and the pad of her hand.

  
“It’s like a song,” Mr. Schue tells her, so quietly he’s nearly inaudible. “Do you know about that yet, Rachel? The similarities between singing and lovemaking?”

  
“Mr. Schue –”

  
“Muscle control.” His sentences are serrated, cracking apart, and his finger on her moves faster. “Muscle control’s the most important for both – aspiration. Snap breaths. Resonance – the resonance is important – it vibrates through you like a groundswell – ”

  
“I’m going to –” She’s shrill. “I’m –” 

  
“Good,” he gasps, “good girl – ” 

  
Rachel breaks against his hand, thighs clenching, coming hard, her orgasm a violent crescendo of nerves. (It isn’t homecoming, here with him: it’s not the familiar reconciliation she’d imagined in her vague, ardent fantasies at fifteen. It’s sudden departure. It’s vertigo.) 

  
She’s dimly aware of Mr. Schue’s hand on her back, pressing, and it occurs to her as she falls out of the clamp of her climax:  _I’m surrounded_.

  
“Oh,” she whispers, and indulges in a slight slouch, enervated.

  
He strokes her one more time, an awkward, tender valediction, and then draws his hand out and away, back to his own body. She watches to see what he does with it, wondering if he’ll wipe it onto his jeans. Wipe  _her_  onto his jeans. He doesn’t. The light catches his fingers, and Rachel can see the wet ghosts of her arousal. 

  
For the first time in her life – or, at least, since her fifth birthday, when her dads gave her a boom box and Betty Buckley’s greatest hits collection – she can’t think of an appropriate song for the occasion. 

  
“Do you want me to – ?” She gestures furtively towards him, and can’t help but look at the outline of his erect penis, arching in a crude outline against the fabric of his jeans. Rachel knows she can't be specific about this; isn’t sure, even, what word she would use.  _Penis_  sounds so clinical. And the others, those dirty words like  _cock_  – she’s blushing, just thinking about saying them in front of Mr. Schue. “I feel as though I should return the favor. It’s only polite.”

  
He looks dismayed, and shakes his head, quickly, running a hand through his hair. (It’s not the hand he’d had inside her.) “No. No, Rachel. This was about you. Don’t feel like you have to, uh, reciprocate.”

  
Rachel nods, feeling relieved, and stands up. She should probably use the restroom before her next class, she thinks. It’s what you’re supposed to do after being intimate, isn’t it? She remembers reading that on a teen sex-positive blog.

  
It occurs to her that she doesn’t know if what he’s done to her – what they’ve done together – counts as sex. 

  
“Are you all right?” he asks, rising, sounding concerned.  It’s the same question he’d prompted her with in the hallway, not fifteen minutes ago, although it feels to her like years and years have passed. 

  
“Yes.” Then, because her tongue’s a bit faster than her brain, she blurts out the truth. “I’m just wondering if I’m still a virgin.”

  
He stares at her. 

  
“God,” he says, slowly, and then swallows. “Um. You’re whatever you feel like, I guess. I don’t think the answer to that is up to me.” 

  
Rachel doesn’t know what she feels like, except that the hard kernel of lack inside her isn’t softened. Maybe, she thinks, two lonely people cancel each other out, like variables in algebra: two corresponding terms on opposite sides of an equation, neither one essential.

  
Mr. Schue clears his throat, and, after a moment, smiles hesitantly at her. It’s an attempt at reassurance, she knows, but it’s poorly constructed. Mr. Schue obviously doesn’t practice his facial expressions.

  
“The next time anyone bullies you, you come straight to me, okay?” He reaches out and touches Rachel’s cheek gently, with the hand he’d had nestled between her legs just a few minutes earlier. “I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

  
His fingers are still warm from her, a little damp. Rachel swallows back the sudden surge of alarm rising in her chest, threatening to ring out through her throat: a grace note of panic at what she’s begun. 

  
“Okay,” she says, and her face is a perfect mask of calm. “Okay.” 

 


End file.
